The Tipping Point

“The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate.”
This is the tipping point as described in Malcolm Gladwell’s book.

Crossing the Threshold

The tipping point is a moment when you thought previously known factors would produce predictable results—but then they don’t. It’s the surprising point where things take a sudden turn from out of nowhere. It can be an accumulation of little things, it mostly is. When we reach the tipping point, change to occur. It’s the point where all of the elements in a situation refuse to operate in the same way.

Discovering New Ground

It might not seem obvious at first, but over time, it becomes an overwhelming force. The tipping point becomes the gate to the unknown. You can prepare all you want, have all of your ducks in a row, but sometimes those ducks get out of hand, or once placed properly, add in the element of time, and boom—you have the capacity to spark something that’s beyond you. Crossing the line from the known to the unknown can’t always be predicted. Most of the time, it just sneaks up on you, and only when it has happened can you give it a name.